In some ways it´s quite a shocker, in others not: Ruth Zavaleta, former federal deputy of the PRD, has now started appearing in campaign events for Manuel Añorve Baños in Guerrero and declared she supports his candidacy for governor. Notably, Zavaleta was the former president of the Chamber of Deputies 2007-2008, and a federal deputy for the 2006-2009 period. While she officially resigned from the PRD in 2009, it is nonetheless quite a surprise to see that Zavaleta is backing PRI, the nemesis of her old party.
Yet Zavaleta is from Guerrero, and remains close to Governor Zeferino Torreblanca, who was elected as the PRD's candidate in 2005 yet frequently clashed with the party, and who in recent months have launched vicious attacks on the PRD when he failed to impose his favored candidate to succeed him. She has, in essence, simply followed his path.
The case of Zavaleta is yet another sad example of the excessive opportunism within Mexican parties, of which the PRD is hardly exempt: The past months have seen the resignation of Senator Minerva Hernández Ramos from the party to join PAN, and in Baja California Sur, Marcos Covarrubias was long a front runner for the gubernatorial nomination, yet when he failed to achieve it he as well joined PAN.
Yet Zavaleta was no opportunistic newcomer to the PRD: She was one of the original party founders of the PRD, and served as borough/delegation chief in Mexico City in Venustiano Carranza before she became a federal deputy. This in contrast to e.g. Zeferino Torreblanca, who never joined the party in the first place, and whose policies as governor resembled little of the PRD's agenda. That Zavaleta would now join the candidacy of a man who is about as far removed from a leftist agenda as possible, Manuel Añorve Baños, suggests that whatever political convictions she might once have harbored, they were easily discarded on the altar of expediency and opportunism.
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